Sarah, thank you so much for your comment. We used an iterative process throughout the curriculum to help students develop their computational thinking skills through the artifact development tied to their projects. Part of the professional development to teachers and the curriculum implementation instructions also focused on issues of choice and fostering student autonomy. Students were encouraged to select projects that were meaningful to them personally, socially, and culturally; and the complexity of the digital projects they had to develop around that topic increased throughout the year. Teachers had to help manage that with other considerations such as group work and helping students identify problems that allowed them to draft potential solutions. That way pedagogically they could capitalize on students' assets but also promote agency.

Hi, Sarah... Diley and I are colleagues on the project, and I can chime in on some of your questions.

The curriculum intentionally integrates principles of project-based learning, and so students are engaged in selecting a problem from the very beginning of the course. The first 15 days of the course is dedicated to scaffolding students identifying, sharing, discussing "problems" they see and/or experience in the world... small or large. We have a number of collaborative activities, teacher-led activities, small group activities that help them identify right-size problems for high school students. We have developed a number of graphic organizers and discussion frameworks for teachers to process their ideas and goals. Most of which are built on best-practice concepts in the PBL field.

There are 4 units to the curriculum, each generally 8-10 weeks. We have students working in groups on some and in pairs on others. This creates opportunity for students to pivot to new projects OR reshape their focus on a problem they are already tackling to keep things fresh. Within each unit we iteratively and explicitly have students reflect on what they have learned about computer science and about their problem context to frame the problem well and design a good product.

We also held weekly video conference sessions with our teachers in the field (before it was the norm, like now) to discuss management of projects and help develop teacher facilitation skills.

Hi Jennifer,
Thank you for your question. We used a variety of strategies that have been shown by research to reduce stereotype threat, with a focus on promoting stereotype inoculation (Dasgupta, 2011) by exposing students to role models as part of the course, and promoting incremental views of intelligence within the course to reduce stereotype threat in the domain (Yeager and Walton, 2011). What is new about CAPACiTY is that these strategies are embedded throughout the computer science curriculum and linked to instruction, so rather than an external or added activity, these interventions are part of the course. In terms of specific strategies, we created opportunities for: 1) exposing students to stories of relatable role models in CS through videos, 2) reflecting on learning gains throughout the year, 3) allowing students to engage in progressive resume building with a focus on identifying current skills and future options in CS, and 4) creating equity-supportive collaborative experiences, such as jigsaw collaborative learning activities. We are currently studying how these practices and interventions were implemented by the teachers in the classroom and students’ perceptions.

Giving teachers concrete examples of how they can inoculate students to stereotype threat is vital to helping teachers move beyond good intentions to explicitly addressing issues of equity in their classroom instruction. I really like that you have embedded the strategies throughout the course. Do you explicitly provide instruction in stereotype threat and how it might play out in CS courses with the students or is this more of a teacher facing component of the curriculum?

Hi Carol,
Thank you for the question! We provide professional development for teachers on issues of stereotype threat (ST), how they impact students in CS and how our interventions connect to it. But the interventions to students do not address ST directly as previous research has shown that stereotype forewarning interventions can have mixed results. So the teachers facilitate discussions on learning progress and gains, help students build their sense of growing efficacy in the classroom and connect that to their ability in the CS domain, they might address equity issues through student topics when applicable, and facilitate reflections around the role model videos we created for the project but without addressing stereotype threat as a phenomenon directly with the students. I hope this answers your question.

HI Janice,

Thanks for your question. In the first year Introduction to Digital Technology (IDT) course students select a problem that they address throughout the year by collaboratively developing computational artifacts (website, music, and game app) related to their topic. Topics in this course have ranged from mental health issues (anxiety, stress, depression) to school/social issues (dirty drinking water, bullying, too much homework, sleep deprivation, college debt, drugs) to social justice issues (racism, school shootings, police brutality, families separated at the border, ocean pollution).

In the combined IDT/Computer Science Principles or AP Computer Science Principles courses students select a computing innovation that they address throughout the first semester in four assignments that are integrated into one website. Examples of topics for these courses have included self-driving cars, smart house systems, biometrics, drone delivery, flight simulators, Ring doorbell, and bitcoin. The second semester they design and code, in Python or Javascript, a jukebox of songs that they computationally develop using EarSketch.

Hi Jack,

Thanks for your question and well wishes. We introduce teachers and students to programming through EarSketch, a free browser based computational music remixing platform and instructional curriculum developed by two of our colleagues at Georgia Tech, Jason Freeman and Brian Magerko. In EarSketch students learn computational thinking and introductory coding by remixing sound samples made by Young Guru, Jay Z’s audio engineer, and Richard Devine, an award winning sound synthesizer composer. Recently sound samples from Ciara and Common have been added based on a partnership with Amazon to host EarSketch competitions.

EarSketch supports Python and Javascript and can toggle between blocks and text. Our first year course CAPACiTY IDT dissemination teachers attended a 1 week PD in the summer, were supported throughout the year with a couple of evening webinars, are responded to promptly on questions they have, and became part of the EarSketch community of practice teacher group.

Since the IDT course standards require blocks-based programming we introduce EarSketch in that course with Python blocks and in the second year Computer Science Principles (CSP) course teachers use the 3 unit curriculum developed through EarSketch’s previously NSF sponsored DR-K12 project to code in Python or Javascript, though we recommend Javascript to give students familiarity with some of the syntax of Java which is the required language in AP CS A.

Our first year CAPACiTY IDT curriculum consists of 4 classroom ready units and can be accessed by going to the tinyurl request link http://tiny.cc/9pgicz. The EarSketch CSP/AP CSP curriculum is integrated into the platform itself in the curriculum panel. Teacher materials that guide teachers how to instruct using the curriculum panel can be requested in the Teacher Materials and Community link toward the bottom of the curriculum panel. that is on the right side of the EarSketch platform.

Thanks for the info Douglas.  I accessed the website you referenced and have signed up to gain access.  Thanks again for your response.

Hi, Jack. For this project, the only CS curricular pieces we have developed are pieces that really only work in the context of the CAPACiTY project units. We do not have stand-alone PBL CS lessons. Exploring Computer Science (https://www.exploringcs.org/) might have something along the lines you are seeking? Thanks!

Hi Ed,
Thanks for the question. On one hand, the curriculum has embedded activities that help teachers move the project at different levels and this helps maintain interest throughout the year. For example, the focus of the project in unit 1 and 2 require students to do more research and provide informational information to audience, but in units 3 and 4 students are asked to create music and a game representation of their problems which involves a different way to think about the topic and encourage their agency (each artifact is engaging their audiences differently). This helps maintain interest even when students stick to their topic all year, but students are also afforded the opportunity during the transition from unit 1 to unit 2 to change topics (it is early enough that they can choose this, and at this point they already know if this is a topic they want to stick with for the rest of the year). From the teacher perspective, in the professional development sessions, we talk to them about these different points in the curriculum, so they are aware of how to help students manage those opportunities. One of the hardest moments in indeed when students bring in a topic that might be too specific or too broad that the teachers know it will not lend itself to the requirements of the later curriculum tasks. We talk a lot to the teachers about this moment and how to work with the students in figuring out how to either elevate or make more concrete their topics without losing the spirit of the idea the students bring to the class. This is an entirely teacher facilitated task. We also talk to them about the importance of balancing and maintaining student sense of choice and voice, while helping them progress throughout the curriculum tasks. It is indeed challenging and our hypothesis is that as the teachers do this more than once, they get a better sense of how to handle this dynamic (which is consistent with what we know from the PBL literature on the time it takes for teachers to change their practice). We are still studying “how” this occurs in the implementation.

Hi Ed,

This is in combination with Diley's reply in response to the part of your question about balancing interests with depth and rigor. Computational rigor is emphasized in units 3 and 4 when students design and develop computational music using EarSketch and a game app using App Inventor. During both of these units students work in pairs and have both project management and computational artifact production roles. As they progress through each unit they do individual mini tasks similar to tasks that are required to do their project.

As an example in unit 3, each student will complete a mini task in beat making that involves learning the string data type and applying the EarSketch API function makeBeat. By the end of this unit each will make and computationally loop their own beat that will be different sections of one song that includes both students beats. In all units, students give and receive peer feedback on fulfilling the challenge technically and creatively before receiving teacher feedback to iterate at the depth and rigor required. In addition the students rotate their project management roles in units 2, 3, and 4 so that all individually experience a project leadership role in each unit.

Hi Lisa,
Thank you for your question. In order to promote an environment that was personally, socially and culturally authentic for students our curriculum was built around practices that supported students’ choice and voice. Several pedagogical practices and the project based learning arch were designed to support student autonomous engagement, but we also used asset-based pedagogical practices that helped validate students personal and cultural contributions, and activities that were designed to promote agency in order to support their voice in the classroom. In addition, we also focused on promoting collaborative learning experiences that increase equity, and created implementations aimed at reducing social identity/stereotype threat, as a way to support students’ identity and strengthen their sense of belonging in their classroom community. Taken together, these are what we consider the four critical components of our culturally authentic practices. There are other more specific ones we also used (employing storytelling as a way to promote alternate meaning making, encourage critical analysis of equity and justice issues through discussions of representation, etc), but the bulk of the practices are around those main four general components. We are in the process of studying the how these practices were implemented by teachers and teacher and students perspectives on them, and we are using a combination of qualitative and quantitative sources like classroom videos, interviews, focus groups and survey responses.